I use the idea of the "monster" as a template on which to build representations of the other. These creatures both explode and implode; they are living conglomerations on the verge of formlessness, and yet they are somehow threatening, humorous, or even pathetic. These monsters contain figurative elements hidden and interwoven into their surfaces and structures. There are references to the skins and anatomies of fruit, sea life, insects, mammals, and human bodies. The style moves between representational rendering, cartooning, gestural drips, chance marks, and highly decorative, psychedelic surfaces. There is a play between containment & dissolution, that which is bound and that which is on the attack. These creatures are intended to be terrifying and sympathetic, repulsive and elegant, immobile and uncontrollable. Within the process, I sometimes generate an imagined function for the creature, and these mini-narratives influence the titles of the work. Ultimately, I am curious about the dissonance located between physical beauty and psychological annihilation: the tension between that which is identifiable, "natural," and whole, therefore somehow knowable, and that which is disparate, un-whole, asymmetrical, and composed of contradictions.